Race for the White House

For eight years, you've been a heartbeat away from the oval office.

A loyal vice president...

We will carry the fight and we shall win!

...biding your time, waiting your turn.

You know the path to power.

And you think you know the rules.

Kennedy!

But what happens when you discover

you don't even know how to play the game?

1960, America, land of the free,

is terrified of the red menace.

America was very unsettled.

The Soviets had the bomb...

...and because of that there was uncertainty there,

there was fear.

America has confidence in its president,

father of the nation in World War II,

Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But even presidents have to retire.

Who can step into his shoes?

Many think this is the man,

Eisenhower's vice president for eight years,

Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Richard Nixon is well-known to the American people.

Nixon's not scared of the Russians,

as Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev finds out at a Moscow trade fair.

It wasn't supposed to be much. It was supposed to be just a meeting.

But it turned into a confrontation.

There must be a free exchange of ideas.

Capitalism versus communism.

Back and forth and back and forth, jabbing with the fingers.

The words didn't matter. It was the images that mattered.

He was presidential.

He seemed ready for the White House.

Meanwhile, traveling through the bleak Wisconsin landscape,

there is another man who believes he's destined for the White House.

He's young, he's inexperienced, and he's almost unknown.

Senator Kennedy is now in front

of the Fort Atkinson Savings and Loan associate.

His name is John F. Kennedy,

and he aims to win the Wisconsin Democratic Primary.

You would go to a plant gate...

How are you this morning?

...and would stand right there. My job was ...

...to shake hands with Jack Kennedy.

Nice to see you.

Shake hands with Teddy.

-Bobby. -Bob Kennedy.

We worked hard.

I come here today as a candidate in the Wisconsin Primary.

Kennedy is smart.

He knows that if he can prove himself a vote-winner here in the primaries,

the Democratic Party will have to take him seriously

as a candidate for president.

This was a new way of campaigning.

This was a new way of becoming the nominee.

First of all, he's gonna have to beat Hubert Humphrey.

Hubert Humphrey, Democrat senator from Minnesota,

is confident he'll win Wisconsin hearts.

Let me tell you, I've been working for the dairy farmer

ever since I set foot in the Senate of the United States.

So, we knew we had a tough job to win.

It was a monumental challenge.

Kennedy does have one advantage

being a Kennedy.

His father Joseph, rich, powerful,

and the former ambassador to Great Britain,

has always wanted a son for president.

Politics was definitely a family affair.

You had a large family who was out there saying,

"We are supporting our brother or our brother-in-law."

And that, I think, was a very compelling picture.

And if the might of the Kennedys isn't enough,

then there's JFK's ever-present, ever-glamorous wife, Jackie.

You put the two together and people are just in awe.

Really, they were the Beatles before the Beatles.

And for the icing on the campaign cake,

Frank Sinatra serenades Wisconsin with a special version of "High Hopes".

So, I started singing...

...and Kennedy said, "It's never been sung like that before."

Doesn't happen very often,

when a Billboard number one singer, uh, decides to use his talents

to sell a political campaign.

Glamour, show business and family.

Who can compete with that?

Not Hubert Humphrey.

Humphrey recognized what he was facing.

He called himself the corner drugstore, compared to a chain.

The Kennedys were a chain, powerful, big.

How do you do, ma'am?

And he was passing out palm cards, uh, on the streets.

I'm Senator Humphrey. This doesn't work too good either.

It just didn't work.

A desperate Humphrey lunges for Kennedy's Achilles heel.

JFK is a Catholic and no Catholic has ever been elected president.

There was a very strong anti-Catholic feeling.

JFK's team fight back.

It's bareknuckle time,

as Kennedy aide, Paul Corbin, comes out swinging.

How are we doing?

Paul Corbin was a political hack.

We got all we need here?

He was also a dirty trickster. He would stop at nothing.

Corbin arranged to have a lot of anti-Catholic literature

shipped into Wisconsin,

so right away a lot of voters are offended.

And they think that the awful bigoted stuff

is coming from Hubert Humphrey.

Corbin's dirty trick works.

Thousands of incensed Catholics get up and vote for Kennedy.

We won. It was tough.

But we won.

After victory in Wisconsin and a landslide in West Virginia,

Kennedy heads straight for the nomination.

But the Democratic bosses are out to get him.

The first knife in Kennedy's back

is plunged by former president Harry Truman.

Senator Kennedy,

are you certain that you are quite ready

for the role of President in January 1961?

Do not think it was a foregone conclusion

that Kennedy would be the nominee after West Virginia.

He was the dark-horse candidate. He was the outsider.

He was not Washington's choice.

Adoring crowds greet Kennedy at the Democratic Convention.

We had great hopes that, um, Jack was going to win.

Um, he had won all the primaries. But it wasn't a sure thing.

Good afternoon from the sports arena in Los Angeles, California,

the site of the National Democratic Convention,

and this is the big one.

Kennedy holes up with his brother Bobby and his team.

His hotel suite becomes a command bunker.

His target, the old guard of the Democrats.

He knows they plan to crush him.

Kennedy had a major foe,

trying to bring him down at every opportunity.

His name was Lyndon B. Johnson, the Senate majority leader from Texas.

Johnson wants the nomination for himself,

and he's prepared to play dirty.

Lyndon Johnson's allies and friends, at the convention,

begin to talk about Kennedy's health problems.

Kennedy had serious health problems. Addison's disease.

He had a hormonal deficiency that could have killed him.

In fact, his father put medicine

in safe deposit vaults all over the United States

so that Kennedy would never run short.

So, what Johnson does is he makes it a campaign issue.

The Kennedy forces denied it vociferously

and have doctors come out and say that he was above average

in health and energy and vitality

and he had never had so-called Addison's disease

and they lied through their teeth.

Kennedy's illness is never mentioned again.

It's a victory for JFK's team, if not for truth.

Had the American public known just how sick Jack Kennedy was,

he probably could not have been a presidential candidate.

Now they work the convention floor.

John F. Kennedy!

To win the nomination, they must get an outright majority.

Kennedy had the most advanced operation

any candidate in either party had ever had at a National Convention.

Bobby, uh, Kennedy, was the campaign manager.

He's tough, he's brash, and he can be mean,

and he is leading the vote-counting on the floor of the convention.

Thank you again for coming. Thank you, senator, thank you.

They knew exactly what they were doing.

The delegates start voting.

Johnson believed that he'd win.

Kennedy was worried.

He thought he had it sewn up.

But he wasn't certain of it.

Mr. Chairman,

Wyoming's vote will make the majority for Senator Kennedy.

Yes!

Kennedy won the nomination but he did not unify the party.

There were many senior Democrats

suggesting that he couldn't win in November.

In a surprise move, to heal party wounds,

Kennedy names as his running mate,

Lyndon B. Johnson.

One of the smartest things that Kennedy did

was to make LBJ his running mate.

He had the wisdom to know that he needed Texas

and he needed Southern votes,

and LBJ was able to deliver Texas.

Let me say first that I accept the nomination of the Democratic Party.

The Republican nominee, of course, is a young man

but his party is the party of the past.

Nixon was watching Kennedy's acceptance speech,

and he thought it was weak.

He thought Kennedy came across as being privileged

and effeminate and not that good on TV

and Nixon thought to himself, "I can beat him."

Richard Nixon.

Twelve days later,

an unopposed Richard Nixon secures the Republican nomination.

Thank you.

We want Nixon! We want Nixon!

When Mr. Khrushchev says,

"Our grandchildren will live under communism,"